[Like most of my
fellow humans, I spent a good bit of the late summer obsessed with Netflix’s Stranger Things. So this week I’ll
AmericanStudy a handful of topics linked to the
Duffer Brothers’ nostalgic thriller, leading up to a Guest Post from an
expert on supernatural cultural texts!]
On two sides to
science in 80s popular culture, and how Stranger
Things engages with both.
Among the many
ways it significantly influenced
film and pop culture in and after the 1980s, Steven Spielberg’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
helped establish a particular, highly critical image of scientists and science
in such cultural texts. Although in a
later version of the film Spielberg replaced his scientists’ guns with walkie-talkies,
in the original these supposed men of knowledge tellingly wielded such weapons,
one of many ways that their pursuit of the film’s titular alien and of those
kids who help him is treated as highly hostile and threatening. Such
intimidating and dangerous scientists also feature heavily in other 80s films
across a variety of genres, from comedies such as Ghostbusters
(1984; granted, the heroes are also rogue scientists, but the villain
works for the EPA!) and Real Genius (1985)
to teen dramas such as War Games (1983)
and The Manhattan Project
(1986). Despite many differences, all these stories share a sense that
scientists are willing and able to threaten and kill in service of (if not
indeed as) their goals.
Yet in many of
those same films, the protagonists and heroes could also be defined as
scientists—not necessarily professional and certainly not official ones, indeed
often young people who have not entered professional or official worlds at all,
but nonetheless still characters who view science and knowledge as sources of
power and utilize them in service of their goals and victories. Even more
exemplary of that narrative is the film which gives my post its title, Weird Science (1985);
while that film’s two uber-nerdy protagonists (played by the decade’s go-to
actors for such characters, Anthony Michael Hall and Ilan Mitchell-Smith)
certainly do not expect all of the effects of their scientific experiments, and
encounter threats both silly and serious as a result, the ultimate message
nonetheless validates, as do most of the films I’ve mentioned thus far, such
scientific pursuits and the kind of nerdy dedication that they require. Indeed,
it’s fair to say that the key difference between the heroes and villains in many
of these films comes down to the contrast between an idealized vision of
science as serving all humankind and one that serves instead as a source of division
and violence (whether incidental or intended).
As will be
addressed in every subsequent post this week, and most especially in both my
Friday post and the weekend Guest Post, Stranger
Things does its cultural work in direct but complex engagement to a variety
of 1980s tropes and trends. That’s most definitely the case when it comes to
these competing yet complementary 80s cultural visions of science: the show
features a menacing human villain in scientist Martin Brenner (Matthew Modine) and his
plethora of well-armed and willing-to-kill henchmen and –women; yet its
youthful protagonists are defined centrally not only by nerdy interests like
yesterday’s topic Dungeons & Dragons, but also specifically by their love
of all things science, a passion encouraged by one of the show’s most heroic
characters, middle school science teacher Mr. Clarke. Indeed, one of the show’s
most crucial sequences (SEMI-SPOILER ALERT) hinges on the boys constructing a sensory deprivation tank
under Mr. Clarke’s guidance, an apparatus that directly parallels one used
by Brenner and his evil scientists yet serves what we might call precisely the opposite
purpose. Just one of many scenes and ways through which Stranger Things extends, echoes, and adds to such 1980s images and
narratives.
Next
StrangerStudying tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other responses to the show?
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